to describe a state of nature that existed prior to the fallof humanity. Genesis 2, he thinks, describes the irrigationof the earth before Adam and Eve were disobedient andbefore the ground was cursed. Prior to the fall, the earth waswatered from the דֵא (‘ēd), Genesis 2: 6, as a gracious gift;after the fall, it rained only at God’s discretion. He writes:“We remarked earlier that the conditions envisagedhere are different from those prevailing in our presentworld; before the first man’s fall, the ground absorbedmoisture from below and the waters of the springsand streams sufficed to irrigate the whole face of theearth (see above, on v. 6); but after man’s sin, when itwas decreed as his punishment that the subterraneanwaters should be insufficient for his needs, and he wascompelled to depend on rain water, the world-order,including the rivers mentioned in our passage, suffereda change. At first they had all issued from one place,but now they became separated and far-removed fromone another, two flowing in one direction and two in[an]other. Nevertheless, they are all still in existence,serving to remind us of the former state of bliss.”
27

The advantage of Cassuto’s approach is that it reframesthe discussion of the geographical details of the text. Insteadof being location markers to be identified today, they arememories of the way things were before the world changed,and all attempts to locate Eden today must end in frustration.Cassuto was well aware of the various suggestions as towhere to find Eden, but writes:“But in the light of our exposition all thesetheorizings are valueless. Our text, as stated, describesa state of affairs that no longer exists, and it isimpossible to determine the details on the premise ofpresent-day geographical data. The garden of Edenaccording to the Torah was not situated in our world.”
28

Cassuto argues that the fall of Genesis 3 has changed
the geography of the world. There is now a new world today
and an old world that is no longer accessible but still described
in ‘real world’ terms and concepts. It seems to me that an
approach of this kind might point towards a solution to the
problem of historicity in Genesis 1–11.

Deixis

I now want to turn to some analysis of the text in light
of this proposal. The proposal is that, from the author’s
perspective, the world now is not the same as the world
then, but the accounts of both are equally historical. What
is required is evidence to support this viewpoint that the
author’s intention was to write historically about the old
world and the new. One way of addressing this question is
to turn to the literary features associated with historicity,
namely places, times, and names. These reference details
are known as deixis or indexicality, and are indicators
that the genre of the author’s intention was historical.
29
These terms are what Charles Fillmore calls the “major
grammaticalized types” of deixis.
30 John Lyons, in his
Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, call deixis the
“‘orientational’ features of language which are relative to
the time and place of utterance”.
31 To simplify this study
somewhat the decision was made to consider only very
unambiguous deitic features of place. For instance, instead
of the terms ‘here’ and ‘there’, this study only included
specific place names.

The result of studying deixis can be illustrated using
the example of Genesis 12, the story of Abram, starting
from the beginning of the toledoth of Terah. What we see
in this passage is a narrative with some standard historical
features in the narrative. There is a good mixture of personal
names identifying realistic characters, set in particular
places (which seem to require no explanation as to where
they refer, so we can assume that the reader was expected
to know them), and a smaller number of key time markers
to guide the reader as to where the story fits in the passing
of time. In particular, the place deixes are fairly extensive,
and the reader is expected to know them directly: Ur of the